May 10, 2022 • 39 mins
Actor, comedian and memorist Cameron Esposito is practicing vulnerability. Here she talks to Roxane about their gender-fluidity, about why performing feels normal for them, and about why it’s important not to be funny all the time.
Mentions:
● Take My Wife on Starz https://www.starz.com/us/en/series/38334/episodes?season=1
● Save Yourself https://www.esowonbookstore.com/book/9781538701362
● A Million Little Things https://abc.com/shows/a-million-little-things
● Rape Jokes https://www.cameronesposito.com/rape-jokes/
● We Bare Bears: The Movie https://www.amazon.com/We-Bare-Bears-Eric-Edelstein/dp/B089DNJCFC
● QUEERY https://www.cameronesposito.com/category/podcasts/
Credits: Curtis Fox is the producer. Our researcher is Yessenia Moreno. Production help from Kaitlyn Adams and Meg Pillow. Theme music by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiura.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
This past week, I have been from Los Angeles to Cleveland, Ohio,
to San Francisco, and then late last night, I flew
back to New York for the weekend, only to return
to Los Angeles on Monday afternoon. Before COVID, I would
travel like this all the time. It felt normal. I
had been doing it for about seven years. In many ways,
(00:24):
you get used to it, and you learn to love travel,
and you start playing the loyalty program game and before
long it's just old hat. During the pandemic, Debbie and
I decided that this was great to finally be still,
to be in one place, to not be running through airports,
packing bags, slepping things, and so we thought, we're going
(00:48):
to change our lives when this pandemic ends. This is
our stand. And then the pandemic is not over, but
certainly shifting into a new phase. Work has picked to
back up, which on the one hand, I'm incredibly grateful for,
and on the other hand, I just don't know that
I want to continue living like this, always on the road,
(01:09):
going to two or three cities a week. I mean,
it's great, but it's also exhausting. And the older I get,
the less tolerance I have for this kind of dazed
and confused exhaustion where many mornings I wake up and
I wonder what city am I in today, which certainly
happened in Cleveland, And then I looked out at that
(01:29):
sort of gray rust belt expanse and thought, now I
know where I am from Luinary. This is the Roxannde
Gay Agenda, the Bad Feminist podcast of your Dreams. I
am Roxanne Gay, your favorite bad feminist. On the roxand
Gay Agenda, I talk about something that's on my mind,
and then I talked with someone interesting to find out
(01:51):
what is on their mind. On this week's agenda, Personal
and Cultural jet Lag Can't and Esposito Welcome to the
Rock Sand Gay Agenda. Hi. For those of you who
may not know, Cameron Esposito is a very funny person.
But you don't have to take my word for it.
(02:12):
There is plenty of evidence. You should just check out
their stand up special Rape Jokes, which is brilliant and
engages a subject that I'm really interested in, which is
can you talk about truly difficult subjects with humor? And
the answer is if you're smart enough exactly, and very
few people are as smart as they think they are
exactly yes. Or you can watch old episodes of their
(02:36):
TV series Take My Wife on Stars, or you can
listen to their podcast Query, where they interview lgbt Q
folks about well life and being queer and making it
in this world. Or you can hear their voice on
the animated movie Bear Bears where they play ranger tapes.
Or because they're a terrific writer, you can read their
(02:57):
memoir Save Yourself. Here is an excerpt of them reading
themselves in the audio version of the book. This is
a book about the small, worried guy left backstage. It
isn't a sidebar to a straight person's rebirth. I don't
give a makeover or plan a wedding or get a
couple back together. It's not a tragedy. I don't die
at the end of this book, having finally decided to
(03:19):
kiss the girl. It's honest and bumpy and scared and
sexy and real. Cameron Esposito, Welcome to the Roxanne Gay Agenda.
Now I'll say hi, Roxanne. I just got excited. I
was happy to see you. I'm excited to see you too.
Where are you this morning? I'm in Los Angeles? And
when you were speaking what was coming up in my
(03:41):
chest was the loneliness um that I have felt. You know,
I've been I started live performance when I was in college.
It's actually been a little over twenty years now for me,
and a lot of that has included pretty extensive travel.
And like you, the pandemic, the eight of it is
the first time I have been home that long in decades,
(04:04):
and also into my entire adult life, I didn't really
realize that the reason other people were able to have
like stable friendships and hobbies is because they knew where
they were on a particular day when they woke up. Um.
So I've been really working on digging into normalcy the
last couple of years, which has been a beautiful experience
for me. But I will say I love travel. I
(04:29):
am a meditative walker, so I walk cities a lot
as a way of working through um intense anxiety, and
so I feel like I've I've been so many places
and really been in the streets of those places. Yeah, exactly,
and also I've been there by myself, which you know
(04:51):
that the loneliness of travel is something I think about
quite a lot because I can't remember where I was
recently and I just thought, I don't think I've ever
been so lonely in my life, because I was there
for less than twenty four hours, and so when I'm
going to be in a city for less than twenty
four hours, in general, I don't really reach out to
(05:12):
anyone I know there. And then I get back to
my hotel room or I go sit in the hotel
restaurant to have dinner and I think I should have
called such and such, and wow, what was wrong with me?
So how are you adjusting to this sort of getting
back to the road. I understand that you just came
back from Ireland, rural Ireland too, so there was so
(05:33):
before there was even a plane, there were like trains
through green rolling hills, because because Ireland is a stereotype
of itself, it really is really the number of sheep,
it's it's as many as you think. It's a few more.
Even but before that I was doing some touring. I
went from touring to Ireland. And before that, I've been
(05:53):
in Vancouver for the last six months working on TV show.
Before that, I was in Atlanta shooting a movie. So
I really haven't been home in like ten months. And
when I was in Vancouver, I was there first a
longer stable period of time, so I really did have
like a huge social life, which felt amazing to be
able to be in a different city and like incorporate that,
which was really beautiful. But I think a lot of
(06:16):
the experience of traveling for work is just being unwitnessed,
like living a life that is unwitnessed. I have seen
things and been places and had things happen, and the
only witnesses myself. So I mean, maybe that's also a
pretty human experience for anybody. I mean, I'm thinking about
like people who stay home and work in the house
(06:39):
and provide childcare to their kids, Like that's an unwitnessed
experience for a lot of folks. So I think there
are a lot of things where we're just the only
witness to our experience. And I don't know that we
talked about that as a culture. That's interesting. I've never
thought about that, But you're right, there are these moments
where we have these experiences and no one's there to
(07:01):
to know it, and of course I will come home
and tell my wife about it, and it's great. But
that's sort of thing that happens in this weird travel vacuum.
We all just sort of carry that. But you mentioned
the TV show, so I know that people will be
interested because when I found out you were on this
TV show, it was like, now that's interesting. I think
(07:23):
it's interesting too. What TV show are you on and
what is your character? What are you doing there? So
I'm currently on a TV show called A Million Little Things,
which is an ABC drama, and my character, Greta is
a tattoo artist and a love interest for one of
the main characters of the show, Grace Park, who really
(07:48):
I thought she was straight. Well I mean, yes, yes,
she is straight, but her character Katherine is having an
experience on the show. But Grace is like somebody I've
been a forever because she was in Battlestar Galactic, my
favorite shows and of all time. But she also has
a star of wife. I've oh, she's this like Hollywood
(08:10):
stamped hot person, you know, woman. So it is wild
to me that I got cast to play opposite her
in a in a network drama. People that look like
me aren't usually cast as love interests. No, I mean
(08:30):
it's I'm surprised only because I know things are changing,
but I did not guess that the old Guard was
sort of in this place where they could show queer stories.
It's wild. So how do you feel about that? Do
you think that this is a sign that things are improving?
I feel a couple different ways about it. Personally, It's
been a pretty huge moment for me. You know, I've
(08:53):
been in big, giant movies, I've performed live like I
just have done so many different types of things. This
is my first time being in a drama, and I
think there's a reason for that. You know, I am
gender nonconforming person. I have a lot of masculine energy,
but I also sometimes feel like a woman identifies gender fluid.
(09:13):
I have like I like to wear makeup, but I
wear makeup in a way that to me feels like
David Bowie or Harry styles. I have like kind of
fucked up punk rock hair. I'm wearing men's clothes because
I got to, you know, ask wardrobe for what I
want and comedy. Part of why I think I'm so
funny is that I've been pretty mothered my entire life
(09:38):
because people didn't know how to take me. I'm like
a failed woman or a two small guy. Um, and
I've gotten a lot of feedback for that. Bullying as
a kid, and then I think I'd call it like
harassment as an adult. And comedy is a great way
to disarm people. I mean, I am very funny, and
(10:01):
that is a great way of sort of undercutting my
standing in my power. It's also a great way to survive.
It's fun to be around, you know, Like, I'm so
happy I have that skill set. But I also think
that at this point, you know, twenty years into being
funny for a living, not just like I think I
(10:22):
got to a place where I was like, this is
sad a little. There's a part of this that's sad,
Like it's just to say to somebody like this is
who I am and it's not funny that I hadn't
had a chance to do yet, and I just was
ready to do that. This show, I like got that audition,
this audition the week of my forty birthday, and DJ Nash,
(10:43):
who's the show creator, I wanted to go with me.
I don't know, you know, I mean, it just was like,
it's a feels like divine um inspiration here. It's been
amazing to be on the show to like do things
like take my shirt off with like a sexy score underneath,
and and I'm supposed to be on TV and you're
(11:03):
not supposed to laugh at me, um, and at how
my haircut might not match what you imagine my body
might look like. Um, I'm the object of desire for
this main character. Like, my character is not chasing her,
her character is interested in me. It's like actually affected
me a lot as a person doing this job. One
(11:25):
of the things that you bring up for me is
that when we talk about sort of progress, oftentimes we
just say, oh, there's a queer person on this mainstream show,
but we don't talk about what their storyline is. And
I love hearing that it's not some weird, unrequited pining
after the straight girl saying that you're the object of
desire as you should be, and it's a big deal.
(11:52):
It's a big deal. It is a huge deal, you know.
I think that a lot of times, when you're masculine
of center, people don't know what to do with you,
and so they either ignore you or they treat you
as the butt of the joke. They missed gender you.
I could called sir every single day, and I just like,
(12:12):
look in my boobs and I'm like what what? And
my hair is curled, and I'm fine with it. I'm butcher,
It's fine what I'm actually I'm not fine with it,
but it is what it is. Like I'm not gonna
lose my ship over it most days. But it's always
interesting that people see what they want to see in
other people, and when you sort of confound their gender expectations,
(12:32):
they can get incredibly upset. And so historically, how have
you carried the sort of gender expectations that people put
on you? And how do you find your own way
to who you are now as a gender fluid person
transitioning into acting in a drama and getting back on
the road, Like how do you do that? Because I
think a lot of us wonder like how do I
(12:54):
get okay with myself when I have to accept that
the world may never get okay with me? That's such
a good question. And some of the audience on this
show really happy to see me, They're really happy to
have this character, and then some of the audiences like
very pissed that this character exists and that I'm the
person playing this character. And I don't even think there's
a recognition of like why that might be. I can
(13:18):
kind of see in the like stuff that comes through
the internet that there's like a we don't know why
we don't like this character, but there's something and I'm like, well,
I know why you because it's my last experience is
that that I am challenging for folks. And the thing
that you know, where I've really I don't know how
(13:40):
to feel open, unarmored kind in the world with the
amount of experience that I've had feeling attacked and marginalized.
But what I will say is that as I got
(14:01):
tougher and thicker skin over the years, the world wanted
to funk with me more. You know, like I chose
stand up. We all everybody knows stand up is a misogynistic, homophobic, racist,
anti trans like this is. It's always been that way,
(14:22):
probably always will be that way. Also, those are my
you know, those my friends, those are my peers. I
chose to insert myself into that group as a job,
and I'm very good at it, I'm successful. But why
why are you doing that? And I think for me,
like why would you put yourself in that situation? I
think for me, I think I was on a path
(14:42):
of Okay, if the world wants to fight me, I
will fight back. But in the last couple of years,
I have been working on softening because I'm exhausted and
I'm tired of fighting, and I also don't want people
to fight me. So what I've been doing is trying
to build a closer group of friends and community that
know who I really am and that don't want to
(15:03):
fight me on it, and really worry the most about
those people, like I have a rule now where I
don't talk about anything on stage that I haven't told
somebody interpersonally, because I used to just kind of take
my pay to my job where everybody wants to fight
with me and then fight back, and I don't do
that anymore. What made you make that change, because that's
(15:25):
an interesting change. Several years ago, well, so early in
my writing career, if you fucked with me, you were
going to show up in a story, if you hurt me,
you were going to end up on that page. And
I felt entirely justified in doing so, because you know,
you shouldn't have fucked with me like you really hurt me.
And so one day a short story I wrote ended
(15:47):
up in Best Lesbian Erotica maybe two thousand two, pretty
long ago, and my ex called me up and she said,
I read your story. It was called Bitter Feasts and
I said yeah, and I said, well, you know that
is what happened, and she said, well, yes, that's what happened,
but you didn't talk about your part in it. I
had to really pause after we hung up and take
(16:09):
a moment and think what is she talking about? And
then I understood with maturity that yes, these terrible things
that happened to me, but I mean I wasn't a
saint and I have to be accountable. And so from
that point on, I actually never did revenge writing again.
I will write about people who have harmed me, certainly,
(16:31):
but I do it with more context and not generosity,
but fairness. So you know, I totally can understand that
shift in ethics of I'm going to discuss this so
that you're not like blindsided when I get on stage
and start making these jokes. Well yeah, I mean, it's
also it's mostly for me, you know. I think I
love what you said about revenge. I love the first
(16:53):
revenge writing. I got fired from a job very very
early in my comedy career, was like wild that I
got this job, shouldn't have had it. I couldn't believe
I was there, and then I was fired and they
gave me a magnet when I was hired, and I
kept it on my fridge for like fifteen years to
be like I'll show them. And then a couple of
years ago, I was exiting a show and the guy
(17:15):
who fired me was in the lobby. She had come
to the show, and I was like, oh my god,
and he you know, like, how what are you doing here?
He said, camera had been following your career and I'm
so proud of you, like You've been doing such a
great job. And I was truly like what, Like I
(17:36):
my life, you know, and this this is there's many people,
right like all the people that laughed at me and
when I was a kid, all of the parents that
said terrible things about my body, or the culture that
doesn't want me to exist, like like fuck you, I'll
put you on my fridge and I will make you sorry.
But this person was out there cheering for me, and
(17:58):
I think I just I realized that like what I
am doing this, Like I am the one converting pain
into fuel, and I could be the person that stops that.
If I want to exist in a world where I'm
mining for more than pain, like if that's something that
I'm interested in. And part of what created that shift
for me is also that I went through this like
(18:19):
super painful divorce and it was so awful and I
could be funny about it. I was. I had a
tour during the whole time. I was like all these
dates that were already set as it was starting. I
was devastated, and I could be funny, but I actually
felt betrayed by myself because I was like, I want
(18:40):
to cry about this, rage about this, like be you know, dissociate,
I want to spin out, I want to There's all
these things that I want to do. I want to like,
you know, listen to the Saddest Tea and Sarah songs
whatever it was, but I don't want you to laugh,
like don't laugh this, you know. And it wasn't like yeah,
(19:02):
I just felt I felt angry at myself for being
able to manipulate an audience into thinking that this was
something that I that could be funny. I was like,
this actually isn't funny yet for me. And so I
mean this massively changed my life, this experience. Yeah, I
mean that's just a challenging thing. To to be a
(19:23):
public figure in a marriage with a public figure, have
the marriage fall apart, be known for comedy, and then
have to go around the country, around the world, and
people expect that. Do you ever decide, I know my
audience is expecting this certain thing for me, but I'm
(19:44):
going to give them something else. I'm shifting as an artist,
I'm growing, I'm changing, And do you ever just decide
I'm going to do what I need to do instead
of giving the audience what I know they want. Yeah,
I think I have gotten there. I mean I've I
have a new hour that I've been working on for
honestly years at this point, which is pretty different for me.
I developed material pretty quickly, but this has been taking
(20:06):
like five years or something like that. Um. And that's
part of it too, just sitting with it, um and
having it changed. Some stuff is still in it, some
stuff is really different because I've changed so much. Yeah.
Also people have loved it. You you were part of this.
But I released my book Save Yourself like week one
of the pandemic, and so I did all these like
(20:26):
zoom panels before we even knew what zoom was, and
on one of them, hardcore pornography played for into the
homes of hundreds of little queers who were terrified out
of their minds because we didn't know what zoom bombing
was and there was like no safety settings and like
the most intense porn and I am slammed my computer
(20:47):
shot because that's the kind of I t professional I am.
But um, I like that if I close. But I
released this memoir and I had these these panels that
were very intimate because I was in people's homes with them.
The chat was going and that was still new and
novel at the time, and there was a moment where
I said, like, oh, I don't think I could be
(21:09):
funny about this about something, and somebody put in the chat, oh,
like Cameron thinks we like her because she's funny, and I,
I mean, obviously it impacted me enough that I like,
I felt stunned, because I really do think that I
placed a lot of my value in being able to
(21:31):
make people laugh. How have you gotten to a place
now where you recognize yourself and your value for more
than just your humor. I mean again, it's like it's
been an exercise in growing trust in others slowly and
trying to tell people the truth and be more vulnerable,
and then notice that people want to include me. I mean,
(21:54):
I don't know if it's like toxic masculinity that I've internalized,
or if it's a justifiable reaction to marginalization. Whatever it is.
I just was never tender with other people, and I
was very hard. Um. It's interesting. In high school, I
(22:20):
was full of trauma. I was dealing with something horrific.
I didn't know how to talk about it. I was
a mess. And I also had always never really had friends,
struggled to be social, and so I didn't realize what
I was doing at the time. But I developed a
really hard exterior shell. And I was very funny but
very mean in my humor. And I would never have
(22:43):
characterized myself like this. And during my senior year, people
were signing my yearbook and I was like, Wow, they're
signing my yearbook even though I don't have any foods,
And one girl wrote on one of them, I still
have it. Um. I really like you so much and
I've enjoyed getting to know you. You're so great, but
you're just a little mean. You know, You're just always
(23:06):
like cutting people down. You don't tolerate anything. And I
was like, nothing has changed. But that really gave me
pause because I'm actually not a mean person. I'm I'm
I think of myself as kind, not on Twitter, but
I'm like in my life, and um, so it really
gave me pause. And I started to understand that I
(23:29):
had made myself into someone like completely different and I
had developed this this hardness and I don't know that
I really let go of that hardness until my previous relationship,
and then I let even more go with my current
and final relationship. And um, it's been interesting to sort
(23:52):
of allow myself not only to be tender, but to
receive tender And so I was wondering, do you struggle
with receiving tenderness, because that has been the hardest thing
for me. If you want to punch me in the face,
I mean, please don't, but go ahead. It's fine. I
can take a punch, but like, if you're going to
like gently caress my face, I might fucking die. Well,
(24:14):
I was just wondering about that, not only more Yeah,
I mean I think I just really I just have
historically been really really afraid of being hurt. And um,
my stage persona also and used to be and it
still is like very sort of powerful, commanding, um, strong voice,
(24:37):
and then I like, you know, get really quiet, but
I just mean like chest out and very big almost.
Like I think about it, like I created an avatar
that sort of goes out and stands in front of
me and defends me. I used to not even wear
the same type of clothes, Like on stage I would
(24:59):
wear leather jack lots and tight pants, and off stage
I would wear like pajamas. Um. And this person that's
been fighting and defending me, and I'm so grateful that
that person exists. But it did feel like a magic tricker,
like a bit of a Wizard of Oz thing. But
then behind that, like if you pull back the curtain,
(25:20):
there was nobody back there because that little kid, that
little Cameron, that like tender person was just behind a
million doors and hiding. Um. I'm so grateful I have
that ability to have this avatar. And also wouldn't I
love to develop this other person like the real me
and have people know that person. And it's been very
(25:41):
hard to be honest with people. I have friends. There's
this group of women, really cool, beautiful, powerful women that
I started having lunch with twice a week at the
very beginning of the pandemic on Zoom, and they started
telling me that they love me. I can't tell you
how horrifying that was when that was happening, especially because
(26:04):
I don't even know if I you know that it's
a group of women. I always thought I was scared
of men. No, I get that. I'm not scared of man.
I know how to deal with men. I am terrified
of women because I don't know if they don't know
if women think I get to be part of the group.
Um also because they are who I'm attracted to, and
(26:27):
I don't know if that is something that might be
disgusting to a woman. Yeah, just this. It's it's experiences
like that, going twice a week and having people tell
me they love me. I was texting with one of
the folks who joins this group this week and I
said I love you during the text and she said,
oh my god, you said I love you first. And
(26:48):
it really was like, that's where I'm at now I
can say I love you first, but it's taken years.
That is huge growth and it's always interesting as I grow.
The older I get, the more I'm able to recognize
the growth, Whereas when I was younger, I don't know
that I was growing all that much, and when I did,
(27:09):
you know, I didn't. And the one thing I find now,
and it's only because I live with someone, it's pointed out,
it's that I still see myself as the old me
while everyone else sees me as the new me. And
sometimes my wife will say that's the old roxyand talking
like that's not what just happened. And it's so interesting
(27:32):
that we get so not invested, but so mired in
these previous versions of ourselves that sometimes it's really hard
to step out of it and and truly recognized. I
may not be sort of at the promised Land, but
I'm in a different place now. And it's just always interesting,
for lack of a better word, to sort of see
(27:55):
that growing up, changing, evolving. It's not really a linear process,
and it's not a tidy process. I find it to
be incredibly frustrating and messy. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean also,
my my wife Katie um like doesn't fall for my
(28:18):
magic trick. She thinks I'm very funny and you and
strong and all these things. I guess, but I mean,
I feel like she seemed to see something that some
other people I had been able, that I had been
able to hide from other people. What is it like
when you meet someone who truly sees you like, do
(28:41):
you do you? Is your instinct to run away or
run towards them? You know, it's been complicated. I think
there are some parts of it that I have like
loved and craved for so long, and then there's another
part of it. Right now, I'm in a in an
interesting moment where my life and work outside of the
(29:06):
home is like picking up again. And then also that's
happening in the world. The world is opening up again
for a while. I just my job is very, very stimulating,
and I would say even chemically addictive because it's so
engaging and engrossing, and it's chemically I'm altered by the
jobs that I do. You know, I have to say,
(29:28):
I don't do stand up, but I do get on
stage multiple times a week, and it is addictive like
that is so it actually gets me out of the
house and gets me to the airport. It's like there's
this when you look at at an audience and there
are all these people who have chosen mostly except for
campuses who have chosen to be there just to listen
(29:49):
to you. It's like, wow, this is incredible. It never
gets old, I have to say. And there is a
sort of like dopamine rush that pens. The same thing
is true, like that's true in stand up and I
also find that to be true, you know right now
and this version of this podcast where like we're so
(30:10):
focused on each other like that like this is not,
this is not how this is such a manufactured way
of being the world staring into each other's eyes for
an hour even though it's on a computer. Um, this
sort of depth. And then you know, being on set.
The experience of being on set is waiting for five
(30:30):
hours for your scene and then somebody says to you
like you have to do it right now, and like
nail it. And for me again, these all of these
things I've chosen, and all of these things I like
are things that light me up and make me feel
like I'm on fire, which is kind of how I
feel in the world anyway, Like I have I have
so much um anxiety but also interest joy, Like I'm
(30:52):
such a I'm just like kind of an on fire
person UM with an addictive personality. And so when I'm
in these situations, attually the world quiets down and I
feel normal, Like I feel relaxed. This is you know,
a lot of people will say when you do stand up.
I don't know if people say this to you about reading,
I bet they do. They'll be like, oh my god,
I don't know how you do that. You get up
in front of thousands of people or hundreds of people
(31:13):
or whatever it is, and it's like, I don't know
how You're alone in a room with yourself, because for me,
that's torture. But being in front of that number of people,
it feels like it's stressful. It's I feel on you know,
I feel in the flow. It's the only time where
the way I feel on the inside makes sense. Like
I'm like, oh, thank God for all of this. That's interesting,
(31:36):
that's really interesting. Yeah, I don't love it. I mean,
I'm afraid of public speaking, but I've figured out a
way to make it work for me, and so in
many ways, I actually try not to think about the
audience because if I think about the audience too much,
I'm going to get too nervous. Um and then once
I get in the flow, and in general, I will
generally find my flow in the first five or ten minutes,
(31:57):
and then you know, we do. Sometimes it's an on
stage interview and you have to sort of be entertaining.
And I have figured out how to entertain a hundred
people or a thousand people or five thousand people. I
can do it. But it's a challenging dynamic for me
because I'm a writer and in many ways i'm a
writer because I never ever in life wanted to be
(32:20):
on stage or in front of a camera, and this
has been the most bewildering turn of events. It's just like, wait,
you want me to do? What the I mean? I
mean that I will say that ship was fucking fun.
It was my first time on a TV set and
I had a little honeywagon and like the hair person
(32:43):
was on point, Like it was such a great experience,
and I got my sad card. Yes that there was
a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun.
Like that made me think I think I would do
this again. Awesome, right, I mean, I hear you. There
are different types of people. When I'm on stage. It's
(33:04):
like a spiritual experience for me because I feel like
I can run the program of the material that I'm
going to do. But there's another there's like a heightened
version of myself that's behind that, experiencing all of the
different bodies in the room and tuned into what is
(33:25):
happening and what they might need. And then the greatest
thing in the world is if something happens in the
room and I can bring it into the set and
talk about it. And again, I think it feels like
a magic trick for folks because it's like, oh my god,
Cameron's up there, but they're also here and I um,
I mean, it's all very heavy, but it's like how
(33:47):
I experience God, to be honest, So it's very It
very much works for me. And the whole reason I
was talking about any of this to begin with is
that I have been living this one particular life in
my relationship of being been and being at home, and
now this part of my life is turned back on
and I'm in a new moment of transition trying to
understand how to go from at home with a person
(34:10):
who makes me feel safe and seen to reincorporating that
life and that person into this other version of me
that's like a lot bigger and um messier and wilder.
Do you find that transition back and forth to be challenging. Yes,
it is totally challenging. Yeah, I think it really really is.
(34:31):
I once interviewed an actor who said that when he
comes back from filming a movie, his long term girlfriend
like seven eight years basically tells him that he needs
to go be alone for a week, to leave that
character that he was just playing behind and get out
(34:52):
all of the sort of adrenaline and you know, the
power of being number one on the call sheet and stuff,
and remember that he needs to bring his ass home
so that he can be at home and be a
partner that she's been away from for so long. And
I've never forgotten that because it makes a lot of sense,
like to go from that intense environment of being one
(35:15):
thing and then recognizing, oh, no, that's actually my job
and this is who I am and my you know,
my family needs me to come back down to earth. Now. No,
I think that's right. I mean, I think again, this
is like a position of enormous privilege because it's incredibly unusual,
like very few people get to do this. Very few
(35:35):
people are that actor that then has to go home. Um,
and and I think that's true for me too. I don't.
I don't know that there's like a roadmap for how
to be a person that's functional and also be somebody
who gets to feel like this turned on by career.
I always try to remember, like when I'm feeling like
(35:58):
woe is me for whatever reason, or just like frustrated
or overwhelmed. Often really it's just overwhelmed by the staggering
amount of work that I've chosen, Like it's all me. Um.
I always I try to remember, like I'm truly one
of the luckiest people in the world. Like it's so
rare to be able to do anything as a writer
(36:22):
beyond just sort of like hope and dream and to
to have an actual, viable career that has lasted for
more than thirty seconds. I don't take it for granted,
and I know that you don't either, and have been
doing this for quite some time. What's next for you? Um?
Do you hope to stay on a million little things?
(36:43):
I always want to say a million little lies? Um
do you want to continue doing some dramatic work. I
know you have your podcast, query your stand up, and
so I would love to know, like what's on your
future agenda. I don't know if you have this experience.
Can you tell when you're in a moment of leveling
(37:04):
up that you can tell about. Yeah, So when I
get to l A almost ten years ago, there was
this year where like nothing happened, but I got my
first stand up booking on late night TV one year
to the day after moving to l A. And in
that moment, it was like a watershed moment in my
(37:24):
life because it was like this set went so well,
a weird amount well, nobody's first like wrote about it.
And then suddenly I was like in everything like overnight.
There were like five or six years of that where
everything was going so fast and there was no break,
and I had a lot of things happen. Um. That
(37:45):
sort of felt like it was a time to do
some personal growth. Um. And now it just clear to
me that like something's bubbling up again in career. So
we don't know yet A f a million little things
will get another season. If there is another season, I
will be on that. There's like no question my mind. Um,
But it might not be that, like it might be
something else. Something is something is going to continue to happen.
(38:08):
I have like a feature film that I'm supposed to direct.
I have some TV shows that are in various processes
of being sold. It just feels like there's going to
be a next thing. I don't know what is yet.
Are you ready for the next level? Fucking I don't
you know what? Yes? Actually I think ay, I'm what
a great question. I love that all of this is
happening for you, Cameron Esposito. It's just so so exciting
(38:31):
to see someone great doing great things both personally and professionally.
It's a real delight. Thank you for joining me here
on the Roxanne Gay Agenda. It's been wonderful. It was
so good to talk with you. You You can keep up
with me and the podcast on social media on Twitter
at our Gay and Instagram at Roxanne Gay seven four.
(38:53):
Our email is Roxanne Gay Agenda at gmail dot com,
and we would love to hear from you from Luminary.
This Webby Award winning Roxanne Gay Agenda is produced by
Curtis Fox, our researcher at Yestada Moreno, and production support
is provided by Caitlin Adams and Meg Pillow. I am
Roxanne Gay, your favorite pad friends. Thank you so much
(39:14):
for listening.
This past week, I have been from Los Angeles to Cleveland, Ohio,
to San Francisco, and then late last night, I flew
back to New York for the weekend, only to return
to Los Angeles on Monday afternoon. Before COVID, I would
travel like this all the time. It felt normal. I
had been doing it for about seven years. In many ways,
(00:24):
you get used to it, and you learn to love travel,
and you start playing the loyalty program game and before
long it's just old hat. During the pandemic, Debbie and
I decided that this was great to finally be still,
to be in one place, to not be running through airports,
packing bags, slepping things, and so we thought, we're going
(00:48):
to change our lives when this pandemic ends. This is
our stand. And then the pandemic is not over, but
certainly shifting into a new phase. Work has picked to
back up, which on the one hand, I'm incredibly grateful for,
and on the other hand, I just don't know that
I want to continue living like this, always on the road,
(01:09):
going to two or three cities a week. I mean,
it's great, but it's also exhausting. And the older I get,
the less tolerance I have for this kind of dazed
and confused exhaustion where many mornings I wake up and
I wonder what city am I in today, which certainly
happened in Cleveland, And then I looked out at that
(01:29):
sort of gray rust belt expanse and thought, now I
know where I am from Luinary. This is the Roxannde
Gay Agenda, the Bad Feminist podcast of your Dreams. I
am Roxanne Gay, your favorite bad feminist. On the roxand
Gay Agenda, I talk about something that's on my mind,
and then I talked with someone interesting to find out
(01:51):
what is on their mind. On this week's agenda, Personal
and Cultural jet Lag Can't and Esposito Welcome to the
Rock Sand Gay Agenda. Hi. For those of you who
may not know, Cameron Esposito is a very funny person.
But you don't have to take my word for it.
(02:12):
There is plenty of evidence. You should just check out
their stand up special Rape Jokes, which is brilliant and
engages a subject that I'm really interested in, which is
can you talk about truly difficult subjects with humor? And
the answer is if you're smart enough exactly, and very
few people are as smart as they think they are
exactly yes. Or you can watch old episodes of their
(02:36):
TV series Take My Wife on Stars, or you can
listen to their podcast Query, where they interview lgbt Q
folks about well life and being queer and making it
in this world. Or you can hear their voice on
the animated movie Bear Bears where they play ranger tapes.
Or because they're a terrific writer, you can read their
(02:57):
memoir Save Yourself. Here is an excerpt of them reading
themselves in the audio version of the book. This is
a book about the small, worried guy left backstage. It
isn't a sidebar to a straight person's rebirth. I don't
give a makeover or plan a wedding or get a
couple back together. It's not a tragedy. I don't die
at the end of this book, having finally decided to
(03:19):
kiss the girl. It's honest and bumpy and scared and
sexy and real. Cameron Esposito, Welcome to the Roxanne Gay Agenda.
Now I'll say hi, Roxanne. I just got excited. I
was happy to see you. I'm excited to see you too.
Where are you this morning? I'm in Los Angeles? And
when you were speaking what was coming up in my
(03:41):
chest was the loneliness um that I have felt. You know,
I've been I started live performance when I was in college.
It's actually been a little over twenty years now for me,
and a lot of that has included pretty extensive travel.
And like you, the pandemic, the eight of it is
the first time I have been home that long in decades,
(04:04):
and also into my entire adult life, I didn't really
realize that the reason other people were able to have
like stable friendships and hobbies is because they knew where
they were on a particular day when they woke up. Um.
So I've been really working on digging into normalcy the
last couple of years, which has been a beautiful experience
for me. But I will say I love travel. I
(04:29):
am a meditative walker, so I walk cities a lot
as a way of working through um intense anxiety, and
so I feel like I've I've been so many places
and really been in the streets of those places. Yeah, exactly,
and also I've been there by myself, which you know
(04:51):
that the loneliness of travel is something I think about
quite a lot because I can't remember where I was
recently and I just thought, I don't think I've ever
been so lonely in my life, because I was there
for less than twenty four hours, and so when I'm
going to be in a city for less than twenty
four hours, in general, I don't really reach out to
(05:12):
anyone I know there. And then I get back to
my hotel room or I go sit in the hotel
restaurant to have dinner and I think I should have
called such and such, and wow, what was wrong with me?
So how are you adjusting to this sort of getting
back to the road. I understand that you just came
back from Ireland, rural Ireland too, so there was so
(05:33):
before there was even a plane, there were like trains
through green rolling hills, because because Ireland is a stereotype
of itself, it really is really the number of sheep,
it's it's as many as you think. It's a few more.
Even but before that I was doing some touring. I
went from touring to Ireland. And before that, I've been
(05:53):
in Vancouver for the last six months working on TV show.
Before that, I was in Atlanta shooting a movie. So
I really haven't been home in like ten months. And
when I was in Vancouver, I was there first a
longer stable period of time, so I really did have
like a huge social life, which felt amazing to be
able to be in a different city and like incorporate that,
which was really beautiful. But I think a lot of
(06:16):
the experience of traveling for work is just being unwitnessed,
like living a life that is unwitnessed. I have seen
things and been places and had things happen, and the
only witnesses myself. So I mean, maybe that's also a
pretty human experience for anybody. I mean, I'm thinking about
like people who stay home and work in the house
(06:39):
and provide childcare to their kids, Like that's an unwitnessed
experience for a lot of folks. So I think there
are a lot of things where we're just the only
witness to our experience. And I don't know that we
talked about that as a culture. That's interesting. I've never
thought about that, But you're right, there are these moments
where we have these experiences and no one's there to
(07:01):
to know it, and of course I will come home
and tell my wife about it, and it's great. But
that's sort of thing that happens in this weird travel vacuum.
We all just sort of carry that. But you mentioned
the TV show, so I know that people will be
interested because when I found out you were on this
TV show, it was like, now that's interesting. I think
(07:23):
it's interesting too. What TV show are you on and
what is your character? What are you doing there? So
I'm currently on a TV show called A Million Little Things,
which is an ABC drama, and my character, Greta is
a tattoo artist and a love interest for one of
the main characters of the show, Grace Park, who really
(07:48):
I thought she was straight. Well I mean, yes, yes,
she is straight, but her character Katherine is having an
experience on the show. But Grace is like somebody I've
been a forever because she was in Battlestar Galactic, my
favorite shows and of all time. But she also has
a star of wife. I've oh, she's this like Hollywood
(08:10):
stamped hot person, you know, woman. So it is wild
to me that I got cast to play opposite her
in a in a network drama. People that look like
me aren't usually cast as love interests. No, I mean
(08:30):
it's I'm surprised only because I know things are changing,
but I did not guess that the old Guard was
sort of in this place where they could show queer stories.
It's wild. So how do you feel about that? Do
you think that this is a sign that things are improving?
I feel a couple different ways about it. Personally, It's
been a pretty huge moment for me. You know, I've
(08:53):
been in big, giant movies, I've performed live like I
just have done so many different types of things. This
is my first time being in a drama, and I
think there's a reason for that. You know, I am
gender nonconforming person. I have a lot of masculine energy,
but I also sometimes feel like a woman identifies gender fluid.
(09:13):
I have like I like to wear makeup, but I
wear makeup in a way that to me feels like
David Bowie or Harry styles. I have like kind of
fucked up punk rock hair. I'm wearing men's clothes because
I got to, you know, ask wardrobe for what I
want and comedy. Part of why I think I'm so
funny is that I've been pretty mothered my entire life
(09:38):
because people didn't know how to take me. I'm like
a failed woman or a two small guy. Um, and
I've gotten a lot of feedback for that. Bullying as
a kid, and then I think I'd call it like
harassment as an adult. And comedy is a great way
to disarm people. I mean, I am very funny, and
(10:01):
that is a great way of sort of undercutting my
standing in my power. It's also a great way to survive.
It's fun to be around, you know, Like, I'm so
happy I have that skill set. But I also think
that at this point, you know, twenty years into being
funny for a living, not just like I think I
(10:22):
got to a place where I was like, this is
sad a little. There's a part of this that's sad,
Like it's just to say to somebody like this is
who I am and it's not funny that I hadn't
had a chance to do yet, and I just was
ready to do that. This show, I like got that audition,
this audition the week of my forty birthday, and DJ Nash,
(10:43):
who's the show creator, I wanted to go with me.
I don't know, you know, I mean, it just was like,
it's a feels like divine um inspiration here. It's been
amazing to be on the show to like do things
like take my shirt off with like a sexy score underneath,
and and I'm supposed to be on TV and you're
(11:03):
not supposed to laugh at me, um, and at how
my haircut might not match what you imagine my body
might look like. Um, I'm the object of desire for
this main character. Like, my character is not chasing her,
her character is interested in me. It's like actually affected
me a lot as a person doing this job. One
(11:25):
of the things that you bring up for me is
that when we talk about sort of progress, oftentimes we
just say, oh, there's a queer person on this mainstream show,
but we don't talk about what their storyline is. And
I love hearing that it's not some weird, unrequited pining
after the straight girl saying that you're the object of
desire as you should be, and it's a big deal.
(11:52):
It's a big deal. It is a huge deal, you know.
I think that a lot of times, when you're masculine
of center, people don't know what to do with you,
and so they either ignore you or they treat you
as the butt of the joke. They missed gender you.
I could called sir every single day, and I just like,
(12:12):
look in my boobs and I'm like what what? And
my hair is curled, and I'm fine with it. I'm butcher,
It's fine what I'm actually I'm not fine with it,
but it is what it is. Like I'm not gonna
lose my ship over it most days. But it's always
interesting that people see what they want to see in
other people, and when you sort of confound their gender expectations,
(12:32):
they can get incredibly upset. And so historically, how have
you carried the sort of gender expectations that people put
on you? And how do you find your own way
to who you are now as a gender fluid person
transitioning into acting in a drama and getting back on
the road, Like how do you do that? Because I
think a lot of us wonder like how do I
(12:54):
get okay with myself when I have to accept that
the world may never get okay with me? That's such
a good question. And some of the audience on this
show really happy to see me, They're really happy to
have this character, and then some of the audiences like
very pissed that this character exists and that I'm the
person playing this character. And I don't even think there's
a recognition of like why that might be. I can
(13:18):
kind of see in the like stuff that comes through
the internet that there's like a we don't know why
we don't like this character, but there's something and I'm like, well,
I know why you because it's my last experience is
that that I am challenging for folks. And the thing
that you know, where I've really I don't know how
(13:40):
to feel open, unarmored kind in the world with the
amount of experience that I've had feeling attacked and marginalized.
But what I will say is that as I got
(14:01):
tougher and thicker skin over the years, the world wanted
to funk with me more. You know, like I chose
stand up. We all everybody knows stand up is a misogynistic, homophobic, racist,
anti trans like this is. It's always been that way,
(14:22):
probably always will be that way. Also, those are my
you know, those my friends, those are my peers. I
chose to insert myself into that group as a job,
and I'm very good at it, I'm successful. But why
why are you doing that? And I think for me,
like why would you put yourself in that situation? I
think for me, I think I was on a path
(14:42):
of Okay, if the world wants to fight me, I
will fight back. But in the last couple of years,
I have been working on softening because I'm exhausted and
I'm tired of fighting, and I also don't want people
to fight me. So what I've been doing is trying
to build a closer group of friends and community that
know who I really am and that don't want to
(15:03):
fight me on it, and really worry the most about
those people, like I have a rule now where I
don't talk about anything on stage that I haven't told
somebody interpersonally, because I used to just kind of take
my pay to my job where everybody wants to fight
with me and then fight back, and I don't do
that anymore. What made you make that change, because that's
(15:25):
an interesting change. Several years ago, well, so early in
my writing career, if you fucked with me, you were
going to show up in a story, if you hurt me,
you were going to end up on that page. And
I felt entirely justified in doing so, because you know,
you shouldn't have fucked with me like you really hurt me.
And so one day a short story I wrote ended
(15:47):
up in Best Lesbian Erotica maybe two thousand two, pretty
long ago, and my ex called me up and she said,
I read your story. It was called Bitter Feasts and
I said yeah, and I said, well, you know that
is what happened, and she said, well, yes, that's what happened,
but you didn't talk about your part in it. I
had to really pause after we hung up and take
(16:09):
a moment and think what is she talking about? And
then I understood with maturity that yes, these terrible things
that happened to me, but I mean I wasn't a
saint and I have to be accountable. And so from
that point on, I actually never did revenge writing again.
I will write about people who have harmed me, certainly,
(16:31):
but I do it with more context and not generosity,
but fairness. So you know, I totally can understand that
shift in ethics of I'm going to discuss this so
that you're not like blindsided when I get on stage
and start making these jokes. Well yeah, I mean, it's
also it's mostly for me, you know. I think I
love what you said about revenge. I love the first
(16:53):
revenge writing. I got fired from a job very very
early in my comedy career, was like wild that I
got this job, shouldn't have had it. I couldn't believe
I was there, and then I was fired and they
gave me a magnet when I was hired, and I
kept it on my fridge for like fifteen years to
be like I'll show them. And then a couple of
years ago, I was exiting a show and the guy
(17:15):
who fired me was in the lobby. She had come
to the show, and I was like, oh my god,
and he you know, like, how what are you doing here?
He said, camera had been following your career and I'm
so proud of you, like You've been doing such a
great job. And I was truly like what, Like I
(17:36):
my life, you know, and this this is there's many people,
right like all the people that laughed at me and
when I was a kid, all of the parents that
said terrible things about my body, or the culture that
doesn't want me to exist, like like fuck you, I'll
put you on my fridge and I will make you sorry.
But this person was out there cheering for me, and
(17:58):
I think I just I realized that like what I
am doing this, Like I am the one converting pain
into fuel, and I could be the person that stops that.
If I want to exist in a world where I'm
mining for more than pain, like if that's something that
I'm interested in. And part of what created that shift
for me is also that I went through this like
(18:19):
super painful divorce and it was so awful and I
could be funny about it. I was. I had a
tour during the whole time. I was like all these
dates that were already set as it was starting. I
was devastated, and I could be funny, but I actually
felt betrayed by myself because I was like, I want
(18:40):
to cry about this, rage about this, like be you know, dissociate,
I want to spin out, I want to There's all
these things that I want to do. I want to like,
you know, listen to the Saddest Tea and Sarah songs
whatever it was, but I don't want you to laugh,
like don't laugh this, you know. And it wasn't like yeah,
(19:02):
I just felt I felt angry at myself for being
able to manipulate an audience into thinking that this was
something that I that could be funny. I was like,
this actually isn't funny yet for me. And so I
mean this massively changed my life, this experience. Yeah, I
mean that's just a challenging thing. To to be a
(19:23):
public figure in a marriage with a public figure, have
the marriage fall apart, be known for comedy, and then
have to go around the country, around the world, and
people expect that. Do you ever decide, I know my
audience is expecting this certain thing for me, but I'm
(19:44):
going to give them something else. I'm shifting as an artist,
I'm growing, I'm changing, And do you ever just decide
I'm going to do what I need to do instead
of giving the audience what I know they want. Yeah,
I think I have gotten there. I mean I've I
have a new hour that I've been working on for
honestly years at this point, which is pretty different for me.
I developed material pretty quickly, but this has been taking
(20:06):
like five years or something like that. Um. And that's
part of it too, just sitting with it, um and
having it changed. Some stuff is still in it, some
stuff is really different because I've changed so much. Yeah.
Also people have loved it. You you were part of this.
But I released my book Save Yourself like week one
of the pandemic, and so I did all these like
(20:26):
zoom panels before we even knew what zoom was, and
on one of them, hardcore pornography played for into the
homes of hundreds of little queers who were terrified out
of their minds because we didn't know what zoom bombing
was and there was like no safety settings and like
the most intense porn and I am slammed my computer
(20:47):
shot because that's the kind of I t professional I am.
But um, I like that if I close. But I
released this memoir and I had these these panels that
were very intimate because I was in people's homes with them.
The chat was going and that was still new and
novel at the time, and there was a moment where
I said, like, oh, I don't think I could be
(21:09):
funny about this about something, and somebody put in the chat, oh,
like Cameron thinks we like her because she's funny, and I,
I mean, obviously it impacted me enough that I like,
I felt stunned, because I really do think that I
placed a lot of my value in being able to
(21:31):
make people laugh. How have you gotten to a place
now where you recognize yourself and your value for more
than just your humor. I mean again, it's like it's
been an exercise in growing trust in others slowly and
trying to tell people the truth and be more vulnerable,
and then notice that people want to include me. I mean,
(21:54):
I don't know if it's like toxic masculinity that I've internalized,
or if it's a justifiable reaction to marginalization. Whatever it is.
I just was never tender with other people, and I
was very hard. Um. It's interesting. In high school, I
(22:20):
was full of trauma. I was dealing with something horrific.
I didn't know how to talk about it. I was
a mess. And I also had always never really had friends,
struggled to be social, and so I didn't realize what
I was doing at the time. But I developed a
really hard exterior shell. And I was very funny but
very mean in my humor. And I would never have
(22:43):
characterized myself like this. And during my senior year, people
were signing my yearbook and I was like, Wow, they're
signing my yearbook even though I don't have any foods,
And one girl wrote on one of them, I still
have it. Um. I really like you so much and
I've enjoyed getting to know you. You're so great, but
you're just a little mean. You know, You're just always
(23:06):
like cutting people down. You don't tolerate anything. And I
was like, nothing has changed. But that really gave me
pause because I'm actually not a mean person. I'm I'm
I think of myself as kind, not on Twitter, but
I'm like in my life, and um, so it really
gave me pause. And I started to understand that I
(23:29):
had made myself into someone like completely different and I
had developed this this hardness and I don't know that
I really let go of that hardness until my previous relationship,
and then I let even more go with my current
and final relationship. And um, it's been interesting to sort
(23:52):
of allow myself not only to be tender, but to
receive tender And so I was wondering, do you struggle
with receiving tenderness, because that has been the hardest thing
for me. If you want to punch me in the face,
I mean, please don't, but go ahead. It's fine. I
can take a punch, but like, if you're going to
like gently caress my face, I might fucking die. Well,
(24:14):
I was just wondering about that, not only more Yeah,
I mean I think I just really I just have
historically been really really afraid of being hurt. And um,
my stage persona also and used to be and it
still is like very sort of powerful, commanding, um, strong voice,
(24:37):
and then I like, you know, get really quiet, but
I just mean like chest out and very big almost.
Like I think about it, like I created an avatar
that sort of goes out and stands in front of
me and defends me. I used to not even wear
the same type of clothes, Like on stage I would
(24:59):
wear leather jack lots and tight pants, and off stage
I would wear like pajamas. Um. And this person that's
been fighting and defending me, and I'm so grateful that
that person exists. But it did feel like a magic tricker,
like a bit of a Wizard of Oz thing. But
then behind that, like if you pull back the curtain,
(25:20):
there was nobody back there because that little kid, that
little Cameron, that like tender person was just behind a
million doors and hiding. Um. I'm so grateful I have
that ability to have this avatar. And also wouldn't I
love to develop this other person like the real me
and have people know that person. And it's been very
(25:41):
hard to be honest with people. I have friends. There's
this group of women, really cool, beautiful, powerful women that
I started having lunch with twice a week at the
very beginning of the pandemic on Zoom, and they started
telling me that they love me. I can't tell you
how horrifying that was when that was happening, especially because
(26:04):
I don't even know if I you know that it's
a group of women. I always thought I was scared
of men. No, I get that. I'm not scared of man.
I know how to deal with men. I am terrified
of women because I don't know if they don't know
if women think I get to be part of the group.
Um also because they are who I'm attracted to, and
(26:27):
I don't know if that is something that might be
disgusting to a woman. Yeah, just this. It's it's experiences
like that, going twice a week and having people tell
me they love me. I was texting with one of
the folks who joins this group this week and I
said I love you during the text and she said,
oh my god, you said I love you first. And
(26:48):
it really was like, that's where I'm at now I
can say I love you first, but it's taken years.
That is huge growth and it's always interesting as I grow.
The older I get, the more I'm able to recognize
the growth, Whereas when I was younger, I don't know
that I was growing all that much, and when I did,
(27:09):
you know, I didn't. And the one thing I find now,
and it's only because I live with someone, it's pointed out,
it's that I still see myself as the old me
while everyone else sees me as the new me. And
sometimes my wife will say that's the old roxyand talking
like that's not what just happened. And it's so interesting
(27:32):
that we get so not invested, but so mired in
these previous versions of ourselves that sometimes it's really hard
to step out of it and and truly recognized. I
may not be sort of at the promised Land, but
I'm in a different place now. And it's just always interesting,
for lack of a better word, to sort of see
(27:55):
that growing up, changing, evolving. It's not really a linear process,
and it's not a tidy process. I find it to
be incredibly frustrating and messy. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean also,
my my wife Katie um like doesn't fall for my
(28:18):
magic trick. She thinks I'm very funny and you and
strong and all these things. I guess, but I mean,
I feel like she seemed to see something that some
other people I had been able, that I had been
able to hide from other people. What is it like
when you meet someone who truly sees you like, do
(28:41):
you do you? Is your instinct to run away or
run towards them? You know, it's been complicated. I think
there are some parts of it that I have like
loved and craved for so long, and then there's another
part of it. Right now, I'm in a in an
interesting moment where my life and work outside of the
(29:06):
home is like picking up again. And then also that's
happening in the world. The world is opening up again
for a while. I just my job is very, very stimulating,
and I would say even chemically addictive because it's so
engaging and engrossing, and it's chemically I'm altered by the
jobs that I do. You know, I have to say,
(29:28):
I don't do stand up, but I do get on
stage multiple times a week, and it is addictive like
that is so it actually gets me out of the
house and gets me to the airport. It's like there's
this when you look at at an audience and there
are all these people who have chosen mostly except for
campuses who have chosen to be there just to listen
(29:49):
to you. It's like, wow, this is incredible. It never
gets old, I have to say. And there is a
sort of like dopamine rush that pens. The same thing
is true, like that's true in stand up and I
also find that to be true, you know right now
and this version of this podcast where like we're so
(30:10):
focused on each other like that like this is not,
this is not how this is such a manufactured way
of being the world staring into each other's eyes for
an hour even though it's on a computer. Um, this
sort of depth. And then you know, being on set.
The experience of being on set is waiting for five
(30:30):
hours for your scene and then somebody says to you
like you have to do it right now, and like
nail it. And for me again, these all of these
things I've chosen, and all of these things I like
are things that light me up and make me feel
like I'm on fire, which is kind of how I
feel in the world anyway, Like I have I have
so much um anxiety but also interest joy, Like I'm
(30:52):
such a I'm just like kind of an on fire
person UM with an addictive personality. And so when I'm
in these situations, attually the world quiets down and I
feel normal, Like I feel relaxed. This is you know,
a lot of people will say when you do stand up.
I don't know if people say this to you about reading,
I bet they do. They'll be like, oh my god,
I don't know how you do that. You get up
in front of thousands of people or hundreds of people
(31:13):
or whatever it is, and it's like, I don't know
how You're alone in a room with yourself, because for me,
that's torture. But being in front of that number of people,
it feels like it's stressful. It's I feel on you know,
I feel in the flow. It's the only time where
the way I feel on the inside makes sense. Like
I'm like, oh, thank God for all of this. That's interesting,
(31:36):
that's really interesting. Yeah, I don't love it. I mean,
I'm afraid of public speaking, but I've figured out a
way to make it work for me, and so in
many ways, I actually try not to think about the
audience because if I think about the audience too much,
I'm going to get too nervous. Um and then once
I get in the flow, and in general, I will
generally find my flow in the first five or ten minutes,
(31:57):
and then you know, we do. Sometimes it's an on
stage interview and you have to sort of be entertaining.
And I have figured out how to entertain a hundred
people or a thousand people or five thousand people. I
can do it. But it's a challenging dynamic for me
because I'm a writer and in many ways i'm a
writer because I never ever in life wanted to be
(32:20):
on stage or in front of a camera, and this
has been the most bewildering turn of events. It's just like, wait,
you want me to do? What the I mean? I
mean that I will say that ship was fucking fun.
It was my first time on a TV set and
I had a little honeywagon and like the hair person
(32:43):
was on point, Like it was such a great experience,
and I got my sad card. Yes that there was
a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun.
Like that made me think I think I would do
this again. Awesome, right, I mean, I hear you. There
are different types of people. When I'm on stage. It's
(33:04):
like a spiritual experience for me because I feel like
I can run the program of the material that I'm
going to do. But there's another there's like a heightened
version of myself that's behind that, experiencing all of the
different bodies in the room and tuned into what is
(33:25):
happening and what they might need. And then the greatest
thing in the world is if something happens in the
room and I can bring it into the set and
talk about it. And again, I think it feels like
a magic trick for folks because it's like, oh my god,
Cameron's up there, but they're also here and I um,
I mean, it's all very heavy, but it's like how
(33:47):
I experience God, to be honest, So it's very It
very much works for me. And the whole reason I
was talking about any of this to begin with is
that I have been living this one particular life in
my relationship of being been and being at home, and
now this part of my life is turned back on
and I'm in a new moment of transition trying to
understand how to go from at home with a person
(34:10):
who makes me feel safe and seen to reincorporating that
life and that person into this other version of me
that's like a lot bigger and um messier and wilder.
Do you find that transition back and forth to be challenging. Yes,
it is totally challenging. Yeah, I think it really really is.
(34:31):
I once interviewed an actor who said that when he
comes back from filming a movie, his long term girlfriend
like seven eight years basically tells him that he needs
to go be alone for a week, to leave that
character that he was just playing behind and get out
(34:52):
all of the sort of adrenaline and you know, the
power of being number one on the call sheet and stuff,
and remember that he needs to bring his ass home
so that he can be at home and be a
partner that she's been away from for so long. And
I've never forgotten that because it makes a lot of sense,
like to go from that intense environment of being one
(35:15):
thing and then recognizing, oh, no, that's actually my job
and this is who I am and my you know,
my family needs me to come back down to earth. Now. No,
I think that's right. I mean, I think again, this
is like a position of enormous privilege because it's incredibly unusual,
like very few people get to do this. Very few
(35:35):
people are that actor that then has to go home. Um,
and and I think that's true for me too. I don't.
I don't know that there's like a roadmap for how
to be a person that's functional and also be somebody
who gets to feel like this turned on by career.
I always try to remember, like when I'm feeling like
(35:58):
woe is me for whatever reason, or just like frustrated
or overwhelmed. Often really it's just overwhelmed by the staggering
amount of work that I've chosen, Like it's all me. Um.
I always I try to remember, like I'm truly one
of the luckiest people in the world. Like it's so
rare to be able to do anything as a writer
(36:22):
beyond just sort of like hope and dream and to
to have an actual, viable career that has lasted for
more than thirty seconds. I don't take it for granted,
and I know that you don't either, and have been
doing this for quite some time. What's next for you? Um?
Do you hope to stay on a million little things?
(36:43):
I always want to say a million little lies? Um
do you want to continue doing some dramatic work. I
know you have your podcast, query your stand up, and
so I would love to know, like what's on your
future agenda. I don't know if you have this experience.
Can you tell when you're in a moment of leveling
(37:04):
up that you can tell about. Yeah, So when I
get to l A almost ten years ago, there was
this year where like nothing happened, but I got my
first stand up booking on late night TV one year
to the day after moving to l A. And in
that moment, it was like a watershed moment in my
(37:24):
life because it was like this set went so well,
a weird amount well, nobody's first like wrote about it.
And then suddenly I was like in everything like overnight.
There were like five or six years of that where
everything was going so fast and there was no break,
and I had a lot of things happen. Um. That
(37:45):
sort of felt like it was a time to do
some personal growth. Um. And now it just clear to
me that like something's bubbling up again in career. So
we don't know yet A f a million little things
will get another season. If there is another season, I
will be on that. There's like no question my mind. Um,
But it might not be that, like it might be
something else. Something is something is going to continue to happen.
(38:08):
I have like a feature film that I'm supposed to direct.
I have some TV shows that are in various processes
of being sold. It just feels like there's going to
be a next thing. I don't know what is yet.
Are you ready for the next level? Fucking I don't
you know what? Yes? Actually I think ay, I'm what
a great question. I love that all of this is
happening for you, Cameron Esposito. It's just so so exciting
(38:31):
to see someone great doing great things both personally and professionally.
It's a real delight. Thank you for joining me here
on the Roxanne Gay Agenda. It's been wonderful. It was
so good to talk with you. You You can keep up
with me and the podcast on social media on Twitter
at our Gay and Instagram at Roxanne Gay seven four.
(38:53):
Our email is Roxanne Gay Agenda at gmail dot com,
and we would love to hear from you from Luminary.
This Webby Award winning Roxanne Gay Agenda is produced by
Curtis Fox, our researcher at Yestada Moreno, and production support
is provided by Caitlin Adams and Meg Pillow. I am
Roxanne Gay, your favorite pad friends. Thank you so much
(39:14):
for listening.
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